But there is one that he had shown me a while back that makes me laugh every time I think of it. Every single time.

So here is a little randomness that will hopefully make you smile, or, if you’re like me, giggle every time you think of it.

(source)

Ahahahahaha! So random and funny, and I love the dog’s face.

Happy Thursday!

  ~Meghan

But with Josey, I feel differently. When she is awake, I stop what I’m doing just to look at her pretty eyes and talk to her. I find myself fascinated with her little face and am completely delighted if she so much as deigns to smile at me.

So when she was lying on a pillow, kicking her feet against me and throwing her arms around, you know I was loving it. I whipped out my phone to take a video and captured one of her sweet smiles.

I don’t expect everyone else in the world to be as captivated by my baby as I am, but I still thought I would share the video. She really does have the sweetest smile.

~Meghan

= LOL.

I can definitively say that although it was true that I was tired when hugely pregnant and working hard on a nursery, and it is also true that I am more efficient as a mom than as a nanny because I can do laundry or clean or whatever while Josey naps, I can also say that I have never been so exhausted.

The funniest thing about my previous post was the idea that I would get some down time in the first couple of weeks. I can honestly say that I couldn’t have been more wrong about how the first couple of weeks would go.

First of all, Josey was so big that I had to have a c-section. C-sections, as the doctor reminded me on Monday, are major abdominal surgery. And it’s not something I expected. So we spent four days in the hospital, with doctors and nurses and techs and lactation consultants constantly coming in and out of the room.

I also was set on nursing Josey, and because she was so big, she was very hungry. Plus her birthweight had dropped a bit, so I had to nurse her every two hours, followed by pumping, and then feed her the bottle.

Change her diaper, drift off to sleep, then get woken up to take more pills or change dressings or have my temperature or blood pressure taken, and then it was time to feed her again.

A lot of times, that was all going on WHILE I fed her. All modesty in front of the staff went out the window while I was there- anyone who worked for the hospital pretty much came in whenever they wanted, no matter what I was in the middle of doing.

Nothing about that hospital stay was restful, but I will say that I was VERY grateful to be at Northside. The nurses and techs there were very good at their jobs, really helpful, and friendly.

None of that made the pain any less, though. First the air that was trapped in my body was pressing on nerves, making it hurt to breathe. Then it was having to come off the pain pump and relying on pills to help manage the pain as I had to start walking again. (Now, I take nothing.)

Everything hurts when your core is sliced open. Laughing, coughing, sneezing. I never realized how much Tom and I laugh together- really laugh hard- until it hurt to do so. I would literally be laughing and then crying from the pain. We laugh a LOT.

And then there’s the weird knot that is to the side of the incision, just under the skin. It bothers me and hurts constantly, and the doctor said it could take up to six months to dissolve. I’m hoping it’s not that long.

I feel like I’ve never heard how hard c-sections really are before because I had NO idea the recovery could be so unpleasant. But I’ve also been told that going into the hospital expecting it makes a difference.

I can honestly say I’m not looking forward to repeating this surgery every time we have a kid. But I can also say that I would do it all over again today for Josey. She was and is worth it all.

The other thing that made the first two weeks difficult was that 6 days after Josey was born, Tom’s grandmother passed away. We were planning to go out to see her on Sunday, and on Saturday morning we got the call that she had passed on Friday night.

Grandmommie was so special. She was 97 years old and fiesty. She used to mow her lawn in her high heels…in her eighties! She was born before WWI was over and grew up in the Great Depression. She had seen our world change so much, and she had so much fire.

In high school, Tom and I would go down to her house and hang out with her. She always made us sandwiches and just wanted to sit and visit while we would play cards or checkers in her living room.

And in college, one year, I made a big meal for her and Tom for Valentine’s Day. I remember she seemed so surprised that I could cook (haha!) and kept telling Tom to hold onto me because my meal was good.

When we told Grandmommie we were pregnant, she could hardly believe it. She thought it was a joke. For the next few months, she kept asking if I’d gotten a “fat belly” yet. It cracked us all up.

And then, at Christmas, she felt Josey kick, and her whole face lit up. “A baby is a miracle, isn’t it?” She had said.

And it broke our hearts to know she didn’t get to meet Josey. Eight days after she was born, we were attending Grams’s wake and then her funeral the next day.

To go from the happiest day of our lives so far to losing a grandparent all in a week was completely draining. We were happy; we were sad. We were worn out physically and emotionally.

The first two weeks after Josey was born was pretty much NOTHING like I had expected. Least of all did we “chill out for a couple of weeks” after she arrived.

Wrong. I was so wrong about what to expect.

I am so grateful to the sweet friends who have been bringing us meals and to both my parents and Tom’s for helping out around here, cleaning and taking me and Josey to appointments so Tom could work since I wasn’t allowed to drive or lift more than 10 pounds for a couple weeks post-surgery.

It has been a crazy whirlwind. I think we are finally settling into something of a new normal. I have accepted that I will look tired no matter what I wear or how much make up is on my face. That’s life with a newborn. But it’s worth it.

And that has been life since becoming a parent. I can’t believe it hasn’t even been 3 weeks yet.

 ~Meghan

I can’t believe she’s ours!

And, since some of you have wondered who she looks like, here are some photos of me and Tom as babies.

Me in the hospital:

Tom (at about a month old, maybe?):

Personally, I think it’s like you smashed our baby photos together and got Josey. It’s so strange and awesome seeing how she is a blend of us.

She has my: complexion, hair, mouth, cupid’s bow, eye shape, and chubby cheeks.

She has Tom’s: nose, ears, long and lean body, and his dad’s chin. Also, so far, she has blue eyes (though not Tom’s shade of blue).

At birth, I was 8lbs, 13 oz, and 21 inches long. I had long hands/fingers and long feet. My mom and dad thought they had a basketball player on their hands. And then I ended up being the shortest person in my family. ha! Though I still do have long fingers and toes. So you never can tell.

At birth, Tom was 8lbs, 15 oz, and 21 inches long. He actually did end up being tall and still has long fingers. We think he should teach Josey to play guitar since she got that mutual trait.

I can’t wait to see all the things yet to come that are completely her own.

I’m so in love with this sweet baby.

 ~Meghan

Here’s the story.

Josey was looking large in the last sonogram (two days before our due date of the 28th), about 8 pounds and 6 ounces. I was 2cm dilated, so they thought they might need her to go on and deliver.

Saturday morning, Tom and I got up and got ready to head to the hospital. As I was putting on my mascara, around 6:50AM, my water broke all on its own!

I was really happy about it because I had been nervous to have an induction. I knew that first time deliveries that are induced have a higher rate of going into c-sections than non-induced.

Off we went to the hospital, and they told me I was at 4-5 cm. They got me hooked up to monitors to check out my contractions and Josey’s heartbeat. They also got me hooked up to tons of fluids and a blood pressure cuff.

After laboring for hours, the contractions were pretty intense. I was breathing through them like I learned to in birthing classes, but I didn’t quite manage to relax all of myself into them as I was instructed.

I kept most of my body from being tense, but I did squeeze the mess out of Tom’s fingers. I’m talking purple fingers here, friends.

After I was at that point for a while I asked for an epidural. My contractions were camelback, meaning they were coming one after another.

Our friends and family who were there all said that I seemed a lot more like myself once that epidural was in place. And no wonder- the relief I felt with that epidural was awesome.

Then the doctor checked me and was surprised that I was only at 5cm still. She had me laying on my side with my leg propped in stirrup to help me dilate, and it was doing nothing.

Apparently, Josey was trying to push her head down, but she was too big to fit through my pelvis, and that was keeping me from dilating. With the strength of my contractions, she said I should have been at an 8 or 9 already.

Having my leg in the stirrup was supposed to help the problem if it could be helped, but since it didn’t, she told me the only option was a c-section.

She knew I didn’t want a c-section, and she agreed to let me labor a little longer to be sure there was no change. If there was any change at all, she promised we would pass on the c-section.

After she left the room, I started to cry. I had so wanted to have pictures of me and Tom meeting Josey for the first time, and since he was the only one allowed back with me into the O.R., we weren’t going to have those pictures. I also didn’t want to have to recover from surgery on top of caring for a newborn.

I was having a hard time accepting that my chance of having a normal birth was pretty much zero. But with some time, I accepted it. I was ready to meet my girl.

Since I looked pretty awful from crying, I put on some more make-up. I wasn’t going to look worse in pictures than I had to after laboring all day.

The doctor checked me again after an hour and a half. There was no change, so they started prepping me for surgery. And Tom suited up.

Our precious baby girl arrived at 7:11pm on Saturday, January 28th. She was 9 pounds, 2 ounces and 22 inches long!! No wonder she didn’t fit in my pelvis! And our sweet doctor had the nurses take pictures for us.

 They had Tom go with Josey while she had her Apgar scores done and got cleaned up. After I was sewn up, they took me to recovery to be with them. We finally got the chance to hold our sweet baby girl!

After a couple of hours, they took us up to the room we would be in for the next few days. Our friends and family members who had waited all day were FINALLY able to come up and meet her!

Here were the grandparents with her:

And her Aunt Lisa:

Then all the ladies were helping me get JoJo out of her hospital garb and into something cuter.

More pictures! Aunt Lana with Josey and a very swollen, post-surgery mama:

Uncle Ben:

Some of our best friends, Jenn and Justin:

Over the next few days, more family and friends came by. They were so sweet and brought (or sent) flowers, onesies, stuffed animals, Chic-Fil-A, lots of Starbucks, and great company! We felt very loved.

We learned what it was like to function on little sleep for the sake of another person…and not to mind it at all.

Josey charmed all the nursery nurses with her non-hospital wear. No way was I leaving my baby in a “Northside” onesie for four days! Here were a couple of her outfits.

One of the coolest things was for me to see Tom as a daddy. He is such a natural, and Josey clearly loves him. It made me love him even more.

But when the day came to go home, we were both ready. Partly because we knew my mom would be waiting at our house to help us out!

We were so glad to get back to our own home. And this time we were bringing home our baby. Wow.

We are so glad she’s finally here.

Jocelyn Selah means “Joyous Amen.” And it really does fit.

~Meghan

WHOA!

Yes, I went to the doctor today, and the doctor said, “Induction! Tomorrrow!” And then he sang “Tomorrow” from Annie, but he changed “sun” to “daughter,” which made me laugh.

And then, I called Tom, all excited about meeting our sweet Josey tomorrrow. After which, I promptly burst into tears because he had to take the dogs to the kennel before I would be home to tell them goodbye. And I cried because they won’t be home with us on our last night home together before she was born, and everything is changing.

It suddenly got very real that our life together is going to be different in so many ways. A new person is joining us! Forever. We will need babysitters in order to have a datenight. And that nursery is going to have an actual human in it. Whoa!

Nothing like those crazy pregnant hormones to really kick off your evening, right?

Tom calmed me down, and then we called and texted family members to let them know what was going on. Of course, when I got home, I had to get online and let you peeps know too.

I mean, despite my moment of insanity/panic/being overwhelmed, I am SO completely excited. I can’t even explain how ready I am for this girl to be here, in our arms.

We will probably be posting many pictures to twitter and facebook of JoJo once she arrives. Heads up!
~Meghan

Here’s the nursery before anything went up:

Now, we’ll look all around.

Curtains

I had picked out three fabrics I liked together, and ordered them online. My sweet mom paid to have them sewn into curtains and hung up in her nursery. I was really happy with the results!

The sheer curtains are from IKEA, and they’re super girly. Lacy sheers with scalloped edges…I picked them out a long time ago for her room.

And the curtains are lined with blackout fabric. Tom and I became jealous of Josey when we saw how well they worked. In this next picture, you can see how the room looks with the lights off on a cloudy day.

And here is the same room, same camera settings, thirty seconds later, but the blinds and curtains shut:

DANG, right?! I mean, what I wouldn’t give to have our room get that darkened when we sleep!

Entrance

When you first come in the room, there is a wall to the left. It needed something.

A few months ago, I went to the Yellow Daisy Festival with my mom and mother-in-law. I saw this little plaque and had to get it.I didn’t even know if I was having a boy or girl yet, but I couldn’t pass this up.

Now it’s up on the wall!

Mirror

Originally I really wanted to get a fancy round mirror over the changing table. One like this or even more detailed on the edges:

(source)

I looked and looked for the right fit, but I couldn’t find anything like that that was also the right size and in our price range.

After looking for months online and in stores, I finally ended up grabbing a fairly simple, white rectangular mirror to go above the changing station. And I ended up liking it!

Chanel Quote

Over by the closet, I have the Chanel quote I was given as a gift at the Decatur baby shower. Seemed an appropriate place to have it!

Reading and Toy Corner

In the corner by the changing station, I set up some baskets to hold Josey’s toys and books. Originally I was going to do some baskets on the floor, and some planters on the wall, like I had seen on Pinterest:

(source)

I had had my eye on some certain soft baskets from IKEA for a long time, but they no longer carried them when Tom and I went to buy some the other day. I about had a hormonal breakdown and started tearing up right there in IKEA on a Saturday (which I only mention to let you know we were surrounded with shoppers as I almost cried over baskets).

Tom promised we would keep looking until we found something else I liked, and then he found these baskets. Yay! Dad saves the day. =) But the baskets needed a little help, and I had already decided planters were too expensive to do in addition to baskets.

Back to Pinterest, and I found a quote that I liked. Since it was a reading corner, I thought that this was perfect:

I printed the quote onto some photo paper and framed it. In case you can’t make it out, it says, “You’re our happily ever after.” The quote I saw on Pinterest said “my” instead of “our,” but I changed it to fit our family.

So that’s what we’ve added to the walls in Josey’s room so far! More about future plans in a post to come…

~Meghan

]]> http://loquaciouslady.com/2012/01/23/walls/feed/ 17 http://loquaciouslady.com/2012/01/20/super-lisa/ http://loquaciouslady.com/2012/01/20/super-lisa/#comments Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:46:32 +0000 Meghan http://loquaciouslady.com/?p=5000 You all were so sweet with your comments from yesterday’s post about Josey’s changing station. Thank you!

One thing I noticed was that several of you commented on how much energy I have this far into my pregnancy. I had to laugh. You are seeing a few photos of work that took me roughly two weeks total to complete when it should have taken half of that. Or less.

What you didn’t see was that my entire house was covered in dog fur. Our bathroom was disgusting. Our floors looked awful. Dust was on every surface.

All my effort had been going into Josey.

Shopping to get final things before she arrived. Putting things in place- her pack’n'play, her carseat, etc. Putting together meals that I could freeze. Packing bags for me, Tom, and Josey’s stay at the hospital.

Tom and I had touched up the walls in Josey’s room with caulk in areas where the beadboard had seams, and we had begun a second coat of paint… but we hadn’t finished it.

And at the end of every day, I was completely exhausted. So the housework, which I wanted to get done before she arrived too, just slid.

Enter my amazing sister-in-law, Lisa. She and my brother Jonathan have 4 kids. On MLK Day, she asked her mom to watch them for her, and instead of doing something for herself, she came over to our house.

She painted the rest of the beadboard while I worked on Josey’s changing table box.

After that, she busted out her vacuum cleaner. It’s one of those MEGA cleaners that can work on carpet, hardwood…pretty much any surface. It has a tray of water to let it steam clean, and it works really well!

So. She busted out that sucker as well as some of our cleaning supplies, and the next thing I knew, I had a squeaky clean house. She scrubbed, vacuumed, and wiped until everything gleamed. She worked until well after the sun went down.

While Lisa did that, Tom touched up spots on the wall that needed it. Spots that required a step-ladder to reach, only I’ve been told not to climb any ladders.

And I was cleaning up. Lots of scraps of fabric and batting, staples that malfunctioned, a paint tarp, and more. I cleaned out the trash and put away the rest.

By the time we were done, it was time to eat.

Lisa had, in one day, done what would have stretched out over a week for me at this point in my pregnancy. I had so many things to do and move so slowly these days, there’s no way I could’ve done it all so quickly.

So we ate some Mexican food (no, it obviously did not jumpstart labor for me), and Lisa headed out around 10pm.

She a is a total super-star, and she kept saying with all the projects I’ve been doing, she wanted me to have one day to just put up my feet before Josey arrived and not worry about cleaning or anything else.

I am so grateful for all she did that I can’t really find words to show my appreciation. So I thought I should at least publicly sing her praises.

Thank you, Lisa!

  ~Meghan

Her changing table was a challenge. I knew that I wanted to get a dresser and fix it up, but I couldn’t find one that was the right length AND the right height. Dressers tend to be shorter than you would expect.

Finally, I found just what I was looking for at an estate sale back in December. I had gone looking with some girlfriends, Jenn and Megan, and we found the perfect fit- a 72″ long dresser.

The first issue was getting it home. Thankfully, one of our friends from small group was willing to drive over to the house with his truck and help Tom load it up and take it up to Josey’s room at our house. We couldn’t have gotten it without him!

I was also excited to get the dresser for less than a third or what they originally wanted for it. That was a good thing because I had plans for it. The hardware was all going to be replaced, and the dresser itself needed to be sanded down and painted black.

The sanding process took forever! I took out each drawer and sanded it down, including all the little crevices. I also had to fill in the holes from the hardware where I didn’t want them. Any holes in the middle of a drawer, I left for future knobs.

Those little crevices ran all the way along the dresser as well, so it took some time. After the sanding was over, I could finally start painting. (In the picture Tom took, below, you can see the baking soda covered rocking chair too.)

After the painting was done, I went on the hunt for new hardware. At Hobby Lobby, I found just what I was looking for: some colorful knobs that would add interest to the piece and go well in the room.

Unfortunately, I needed 10 knobs, and they only had the two. So now I’m waiting on 8 more to come in, and the dresser isn’t complete without it. But it won’t be long until I have my hands on them, hopefully.

I also needed a changing station on top of the dresser. There were three problems with just putting her changing pad on top by itself.

First, it would easily slide right off, and that was scary dangerous. Secondly, it had a little belt running under it that made it uneven and wobbly. And third, I wanted something more like a box to hold it, and I am no good at giving up what I want.

What I decided to do was build a customized changing station for the dresser. It would sit on top, and I could take it off when she was potty trained. I wanted it to have a section for the pad, for the diapers, for the wipes, for lotion and powder, and for diaper cream and vaseline.

After enlisting Ben, my brother-in-law, to let me use his nail gun and showing him my plans, he told me it’d be easier if he just built the box himself with his table saw. I was so excited when I got my box from him!

I began by painting the inside black.

Then I covered all the edges in batting.

Next, I took leftover fabric from the chair and covered the box with it. I also covered some cardboard pieces with fabric and laid it down in the smaller boxes where you’d see the bottom of them at times.

Then I filled it up and it went on top of the dresser. It fits great, and it’s so heavy, there’s definitely no chance of her sliding off while I change her diaper!

So, here’s the dresser, complete with the changing station:

Again, it still needs eight knobs. But it’s almost done!

And soon, a sweet little girl will be using it. Kind of funny to think that all of that work is to make it easier for us to wipe her behind.

But it’s totally worth it. I’m happy with the way it turned out!

 ~Meghan

Remember the mallard rocking chair from my parents’ basement and the old ottoman I found at a flea market?

As….stunning…as that look was, it was NOT what I was going for in Josey’s nursery.

A friend had recommended a person who does reupholstering, and he did a great job! Want to see it now that it’s in a fabric I picked out?

Ta-daa! Quite a change from the ducks and old leather, no? He fixed something that was broken in the chair and added padding to the top of the ottoman. I love how it turned out.

The only issue we had was that when we got the chair back, it reeked of cigarette smoke. Our friend had not experienced that problem with this person, so they had no idea to warn me this would be an issue.

I HATE the smell of cigarette smoke, and I’m asthmatic, so that was a problem on its own. But when you add in that I needed this furniture to go into my sweet infant girl’s room…no way was I going to leave it like that.

I tried a bunch of stuff. First, I opened the windows and let it air out for days. Unfortunately, it was rainy, so it couldn’t just go outside. It was also cold, which I am sure made a nice dent in our bills for heating this month.

While it was airing out, the first product I tried was Febreze for fabrics. I saturated both pieces with it (with the cushion removed and sprayed all over), let it dry, and then did it again. It didn’t really make a dent.

Then I read that vinegar breaks down smoke on a molecular level, so you should spray furniture with it. I tried that a couple times, and all I got was a vinegar-smoke smelling room.

Then I tried covering the entire thing in baking soda to draw out the smell (another thing I read online, which makes sense since people do this in fridges and freezers). I left it on there a couple of days, then I vacuumed it off. The smells were starting to lessen, but they weren’t gone. I repeated this, and when I could, I left the windows open.

By that point, we’d had the chair for a couple of weeks. I’m not sure if it was a combination of all of those things or if it was the baking soda in the end, but when you go into her room, it no longer reeks. And you only smell the chair if you put your nose right up to it and sniff. And even then, it’s not a strong smell.

Phew! So that was the drama with getting a good deal on reupholstered furniture.

Lesson learned- always ask people who work with fabrics for your home to not smoke around them. My mom said she always asks, but I never would have thought it even necessary. Now I do.

Thankfully, it’s over, and we can just enjoy having a nice, customized chair and ottoman for JoJo’s room! It’s super comfy, now that we can use it.

I see many an hour being spent in that rocking chair with our baby girl. Can’t wait!
~Meghan